Scepter

Scepter is a tier 8 USA heavy tank. It features great credit making ability, with decent mobility, strong turret armour, and one of the best 105mm autoloading guns in tier 8. It has poor hull armour.

1. Armour
2. Gun
3. Mobility
4. Equipment, provisions, & consumables
5. Gameplay advice
6. Overall
7. Is it worth getting?
8. Most recently sold for:
9. Camo cost:
10. Historical info:

Armour

(The Scepter in the images is using Improved Assembly)

vs 225mm AP (head-on vs angled)
Armour when facing flat & head on:
Upper plate 160-330mm
Lower plate 120mm

Turret front 225-270mm
Turret cheeks 275-500mm
Angled turret roof 400-700mm
Cupola 120mm

Armour vs tier 7:
Scepter has very poor hull armour. Its one of the weakest hulls among tier 8 heavy tanks.

Due to this, even tier 7 tanks don’t struggle to penetrate the Scepter’s hull. Always expect the hull armour to fail, never rely on the hull armour.

The turret is very strong though, and unless the enemy tier 7 tanks have high penetration and great accuracy, they will bounce off the strong turret armour.

Armour vs tier 8:
The hull is very weak even to the lowest penetration tier 8 tanks. Just try to keep it hidden, and the turret will bounce shots for you.

The turret is very strong, however when using gun depression, try to expose only as little as necessary. Due to the angling of the turret, the armour under the gun actually becomes weaker when you use gun depression.

Keep that bottom half hidden and enemies will not have any weakpoints to aim for, other than its tiny hatch, and the small areas right next to the gun mantlet.

Note: When not using gun depression (flat ground), Scepter’s lower half of the turret is 275mm+; when using gun depression, this area becomes 245mm.

Armour vs tier 9:
Tier 9 tanks will all easily cut through the hull.

The turret is still strong, on flat ground, tier 9 tanks will all have to load premium ammo to reliably penetrate the turret armour of this tank.

When using gun depression (if you over expose the lower part of turret), enemy tier 9 heavy tanks will have enough penetration to go through the armour under the gun on the lower half of the turret.

Gun

The Scepter mounts a 105mm autoloader gun.

-Alpha damage is 310 on AP, 260 on HEAT, and 350 on HESH.
-It has 3 shells in the magazine, with a 2.73s intra-clip reload, so in 5.46s it can burst out 930 damage.
-It has a 20.8s reload, giving it 2123 DPM.
-Penetration on AP is 225mm, HEAT is 253mm, and HESH is 50mm.
–Estimated aim time is 3.7/3.9s
–Base aim time is 2.3s, but it can get down to 1.77s.
-Dispersion is 0.326/0.277
–Gun handling is 0.21/0.21/0.12, or 0.19/0.19/0.1 with Vertical Stabilizer.
-Gun depression is -8 degrees.

Overall this is a great gun, it has great accuracy, good aim time, good alpha damage, and the best intra-clip of any tier 8 105mm heavy autoloader. Its gun handling and penetration are both decent. In general this is one of the best autoloader guns in tier 8 heavies.

Note that Scepter has very poor HESH, only doing 40 more alpha than AP, and its penetration is below average for a 105mm gun. Its best to not use it against tanks that may have spall liner installed.

Mobility

-Top speed is average, 35km/h forwards, and -16km/h in reverse
-Traverse speed is 35.3 deg/s on hard terrain, and 25.9 deg/s on medium terrain.
-In game acceleration rate is shown as 16.2 hp/t, it has a strong 1047hp engine for its 64 ton weight.
-Actual acceleration rate is 14.8 hp/t on hard terrain, and 10.8 hp/t on medium terrain.
–Terrain resistances are average, at 1.1/1.5/2.3

The Scepter has decent mobility. It has great acceleration, but its balanced out by slow traverse, and quite average top speed. This mobility isn’t impressive, but its also not bad.

Equipment, provisions, & consumables

The Scepter has no special consumables or provisions.

Calibrated Shells:
While the penetration of the Scepter is not poor, its HEAT ammo isn’t the best, and definitely does benefit from using calibrated shells.
Using calibrated shells will increase the clip reload by 0.4s and slightly reduce the accuracy, but it will improve AP penetration from 225mm to 243mm, HEAT from 253mm to 286mm, and HE from 50mm to 54mm.

Improved Assembly/Enhanced Armour:
Due to its extremely weak hull armour, and its well angled turret, enhanced armour does not benefit the Scepter much. With low base HP, improved assembly is very helpful for surviving longer in battle, taking the tank’s HP from 1700 to 1768.

Enhanced armour is useful for improving the turret armour, and making it more reliable on its weaker areas. Use enhanced armour if you want to just maximise the Scepter’s strength of turret armour.

Vertical Stabilizer:
As the Scepter is an autoloader, vertical stabilzer will benefit the tank greatly while it unloads its magazine, as it will reduce the after-shot-dispersion.
Its also important to have on this tank as its a heavy tank that plays at the frontline, it won’t often have time to fully aim so it needs good gun handling.

Gameplay advice

Scepter basically plays as a regular generic heavy tank, but instead of using hull armour, it has to try and hide its hull whenever possible. Even most of the lower penetration tier 7 mediums can go through the hull with relative ease, and this means you have to really be careful with positioning and exposing your tank.

Hide your hull and go hulldown. The Scepter has one of the weakest hulls of any tier 8 heavy tank, and its not small, so its very easy to hit. Its important to try go hulldown and keep the hull hidden from enemies. This only gives them your turret to shoot at, and the turret of this tank is strong.

When usign gun depression, expose your gun only. When using gun depression on a hull or ridgeline, only push out to the point where you can aim your gun on the enemy. Due to the way the turret armour is angled, when you use you gun depression, the area under the gun gets weaker, whereas the area above the gun gets stronger.

Also its best to not go too far over the ridge, as the Scepter has a long, large, and weak hull. It can’t bounce really any tank off of it, even when using gun depression.

Scepter is quite a typical autoloader. It plays similarly to the ones that are already established in tier 8, the Emil 1,Emil 1951, and Somua SM. Use the gun to clip out enemies, then fall back for your reload. Don’t go to any flank alone, if all 6 other tanks on your team go to the MT flank, follow them. Autoloaders like this can’t take on multiple enemies along, and sometimes may struggle against just single enemies.

Overall

Armour – 5/10
Gun – 8/10
Mobility – 5/10
Speed – 5/10

Scepter is overall a great tank when played right. 

Armour is great on the turret, but the hull front and sides are both weak. HE protection is good, cupola weakpoint is fairly small.
Gun has great DPM for an autoloader, great standard penetration, accuracy, aim time, and intra clip reload. Gun handling is average, with mediocre premium penetration & HE damage.
Mobility is decent, with good acceleration rate but slow traverse speed. Reverse speed is good, -16km/h.
Speed is average, 35km/h.

Is it worth getting?

Scepter is not worth getting. It is identical to the M-III-Yoh except for 2 things: Scepter has reserve track mechanic, M-III-Yoh has about 4 deg/s faster traverse speed on medium and hard terrain.
While the tank is overall a great tank, that’s because it is identical to a great tank in the tech tree. Unless you really want to grind credits in an M-III-Yoh copy, the Scepter is not worth it.

The Scepter is worth 8,000 gold. The tank is probably never going to be sold for gold, as it was only available for resource exchange. Nonetheless, it is a very good tank with a great gun, turret armour, and decent mobility.

Most recently sold for:

Scepter was obtainable during the Luxury Lounge events in March 2022, & March 2023. These events required players to exchange their in-game resources (not gold) to earn prizes in the event. Scepter and its legendary camouflage were the main prizes.

Compensation for getting this tank from Luxury Lounge events is 10,000 gold.

Camo cost:

Historical info:

The 3rd design of the H.L. Yoh company.
The Yoh company had a few different gun loading mechanisms designs.
These included loading assists, a fully automatic loading mechanism, or a drum magazine, so its very likely that the M-III-Yoh would have used one of these gun systems.

The gun on the M-III-Yoh uses a drum magazine type autoloader, unlike the M-IV-Y which is a “load assist” type autoloader.

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